The forward part up to the aft cabin bulkhead station is fabricated separately and assembled in a fixture, as is the tailcone. Construction, Flight Control SystemsĪs one would expect for a Cirrus, the fuselage structure is primarily carbon fiber. The engine, which has dual-channel FADEC (full authority digital engine control), sits atop of the airframe just aft of the passenger cabin and has a dry weight of 308 pounds and a 4000-hour TBO.
#Cirrus vision jet price series#
The -5A engine was certified in June 2016 (the original FJ33 was certified in 2004) and Williams designed the engine series for light jets in the 5000- to 9000-pound GTWO class. The SF50 is powered by a Williams International FJ33-5A turbofan that produces 1846 pounds of thrust. Still, when asked if the airframe could handle it-like was it put through the wringer at higher altitudes-we were told most of the envelope testing was conducted at 28,000 feet and lower. On an eastbound leg cruising at the ragged tops of dissipating thunderstorms we didn’t want to fool with (our demo had the optional Garmin GWX70 weather radar), a climb into the low 30s seemed like a good idea, but the SF50-which has the Cirrus-inspired Garmin G3000 avionics suite-isn’t RVSM certified.
With typical speeds of around 300 knots true in standard conditions at a maximum altitude of 28,000 feet, the Vision Jet isn’t exactly slow and doesn’t really fly low, compared to the SR22.
Oh, and it also has the familiar CAPS whole-airplane parachute. Instead, the reassuring takeaway from the sales demo is that the SF50-with a starting price of $1.96 million-flies a bit like a turbocharged SR22 (but higher and three times as fast) while carrying more in a cavernous pressurized cabin. Today, you won’t hear slow and low coming from the mouths of Vision Jet salespeople. That kind of marketing language likely won’t work in the twin-jet market, but when Cirrus said early on that The-Jet (that’s what it was called at the time) would be the lowest, slowest and cheapest jet, it was talking directly to current SR22 owners-many who might have been trying to master the speedy high-performance piston. To see if the airplane really could make an easy step-up jet for existing SR22 pilots, we piloted a new SR22T for the trip out to make some comparisons in ergonomics, loading and handling. And although Cirrus’ jet project initially stalled and almost melted before Chinese capital provided a needed refresh to the production and certification budget, we think the back-burnering of the project (and instead refining the SR22 line) is partly the reason why both models are so well executed today.įor this report, we spent a couple of days touring the Cirrus factory and the Vision Jet assembly line in Duluth, Minnesota, before flying the SF50 on a multi-leg trip to the Northeast. You see, the Vision Jet survives-thrives, perhaps-in a class of its own because its would-be competing single-engine jets, including Diamond’s D-jet and the PiperJet (there are others), fell victim to the market’s downturn in the early 2000s before getting into paying customers’ hands.
But in our view, the most impressive thing about the Part 23-certified SF50 is that it even exists to talk about. Moreover, its cabin and cockpit dwelling is perhaps the most satisfying we’ve experienced. Or that Cirrus likely will achieve its goal of making it a safe step-up jet for qualified SR22 piston pilots. For a moment, let’s forget that the Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet is arguably the most technically advanced personal light aircraft we’ve ever flown.
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